using batch echo with special characters

Question

This maybe really easy but there were no answers for it over the net  I want to echo a XML line via batch into a file but it misunderstands the XML closing tag for redirection      The line is as follows   echo  lt  xml version  1 0  encoding  utf-8    gt   gt  myfile xml   is there any way to give a hint to batch parser not to interpret a special string  I used double-quotes but it writes them to the file as well  The file should look like this after echo    lt  xml version  1 0  encoding  utf-8    gt

User · Accepted Answer

You can escape shell metacharacters with ^:

echo ^<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?^> > myfile.xml

Note that since echo is a shell built-in it doesn't follow the usual conventions regarding quoting, so just quoting the argument will output the quotes instead of removing them.

User · Answer

Here s one more approach by using SET and FOR  F  echo off  set  quot var  lt  xml version  quot 1 0 quot  encoding  quot utf-8 quot    gt  quot   for  f  quot tokens 1  delims   quot    a in   set var   do echo   b  and you can beautify it like   echo off                                                                                      set  quot print   for  f  quot tokens 1  delims   quot    a in   set  quot   amp  set  quot       do echo   b quot                                                                                         set  quot xml line 1  lt  xml version  quot 1 0 quot  encoding  quot utf-8 quot    gt  quot  set  quot xml line 2  lt root gt  quot  set  quot xml line 3  lt  root gt  quot    print    xml line

User · Answer

the escape character   also did not work for me  The single quotes worked for me  using ansible scripting  shell  echo      jobid content      output          quot changed quot   true       quot cmd quot    quot echo    lt response status   quot success  quot  code   quot 19  quot  gt  lt result gt  lt msg gt  lt line gt query job enqueued with jobid 14447 lt  line gt  lt  msg gt  lt job gt 14447 lt  job gt  lt  result gt  lt  response gt   quot        quot delta quot    quot 0 00 00 004943 quot        quot end quot    quot 2020-07-31 08 45 05 645672 quot        quot invocation quot              quot module args quot                  quot  raw params quot    quot echo    lt response status   quot success  quot  code   quot 19  quot  gt  lt result gt  lt msg gt  lt line gt query job enqueued with jobid 14447 lt  line gt  lt  msg gt  lt job gt 14447 lt  job gt  lt  result gt  lt  response gt   quot                quot  uses shell quot   true               quot argv quot   null               quot chdir quot   null               quot creates quot   null               quot executable quot   null               quot removes quot   null               quot stdin quot   null               quot stdin add newline quot   true               quot strip empty ends quot   true               quot warn quot   true                       quot rc quot   0       quot start quot    quot 2020-07-31 08 45 05 640729 quot        quot stderr quot    quot  quot        quot stderr lines quot            quot stdout quot    quot  lt response status   quot success  quot  code   quot 19  quot  gt  lt result gt  lt msg gt  lt line gt query job enqueued with jobid 14447 lt  line gt  lt  msg gt  lt job gt 14447 lt  job gt  lt  result gt  lt  response gt  quot        quot stdout lines quot              quot  lt response status   quot success  quot  code   quot 19  quot  gt  lt result gt  lt msg gt  lt line gt query job enqueued with jobid 14447 lt  line gt  lt  msg gt  lt job gt 14447 lt  job gt  lt  result gt  lt  response gt  quot

User · Answer

another method    echo off  for  f  useback delims       in   0  do     if            ATAD     set      if defined   echo       if            DATA     set   1   pause goto  eof     DATA     lt  xml version  1 0  encoding  utf-8    gt    lt root gt      lt data id  1  gt        hello world     lt  data gt    lt  root gt     ATAD      rem    rem

User · Answer

The answer from Joey was not working for me   After executing     echo   lt  xml version  1 0  encoding  utf-8     gt   gt  myfile xml   I got this error bash  syntax error near unexpected token      This solution worked for me    echo   lt  xml version   1 0   encoding   utf-8   gt    gt  myfile txt   See also http   www robvanderwoude com escapechars php

User · Answer

One easy solution is to use delayed expansion  as this doesn t change any special characters     set  line  lt  xml version  1 0  encoding  utf-8    gt   setlocal EnableDelayedExpansion     echo  line     gt  myfile xml   EDIT   Another solution is to use a disappearing quote     This technic uses a quotation mark to quote the special characters   echo off setlocal EnableDelayedExpansion set      echo     lt  xml version  1 0  encoding  utf-8    gt    The trick works  as in the special characters phase the leading quotation mark in     will preserve the rest of the line  if there aren t other quotes   And in the delayed expansion phase the     will replaced with the content of the variable    a single quote is a legal name     If you are working with disabled delayed expansion  you could use a FOR  F loop instead     for  f      in        do echo       lt  xml version  1 0  encoding  utf-8    gt   But as the seems to be a bit annoying you could also build a macro   set  print for  f      in        do echo         print  lt  xml version  1 0  encoding  utf-8    gt   print  Special characters like  amp   lt  gt   works now without escaping

User · Answer

The way to output  gt  character is to prepend it with   escape character   echo   gt    will print simply   gt

User · Answer

In order to use special characters  such as     on Windows with echo  you need to place a special escape character before it    For instance   echo A- gt B   will not work since     has to be escaped by        echo A-  gt B   See also escape sequences     There is a short batch file  which prints a basic set of special character and their escape sequences

User · Answer

Why not use single quote   echo   lt  xml version  1 0  encoding  utf-8    gt     output   lt  xml version  1 0  encoding  utf-8    gt

[batch-file] using batch echo with special characters

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